Author Jim Lynch
photo by Cortney Kelley

Jim Lynch lives with his wife and their daughter in Olympia, Washington. As a journalist, he has received the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, among other national honors. His first novel, The Highest Tide, won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, appeared on several best seller lists, was adapted for the stage and has been published in eleven foreign markets. For more info on Jim click on bio.


International Acclaim for The Highest Tide:

"A remarkable first novel ... This is an irresistible coming of age fable, dappled with lyricism, briny honesty and good humor. It's as if Rachel Carson herself (or, say, John McPhee) had turned to fiction, bringing an exacting sense of the ebb and flow of nature to the story of one largely unsupervised boy and the exploration of his surroundings." -- Los Angeles Times

"This novel is so very special. If you reach the last page without having laughed out loud, felt tears well up or at least once sat back in wonder at the extraordinary descriptoins of the sea and its creatures, then you may quite simply be inhuman."
-- London Independent

"Graceful and inventive first novel ... [Lynch's) declarative style and vivid imagery allow the science of the ocean to blend easily with its poetry." -- New York Times Book Review

"The kind of novel that book clubs live for, heartwarming, but not unosphisticated." -- Detroit Free Press

"The Highest Tide is one of the best novels it has been my pleasure to read for many a day. ... This is a great novel which you will want to re-read." -- London Independent.


The British version of The Highest Tide became a bestseller after it was showcased by the Richard & Judy Show, a televised book club in London.

BORDER SONGS, RELEASED JUNE 16, DEBUTS AS INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

In its first week in bookstores, Border Songs ranked fourth on a national bestseller list for Canada and third on the bestseller list for independent bookstores in the Northwest United States.


EARLY PRAISE

“Wonderful…tender, sad and leavened with wit, Border Songs reads like something written by a more efficient Richard Russo."
- Ron Charles, book editor for The Washington Post

"Border Songs" is one of the more inventive and unique novels of recent years. Lynch's dexterous handling of multiple voices and storylines makes Border Songs a book that goes by all too quickly."
Rege Behe, The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

"Lynch's comic borderland is not only palpable, it is richly metaphoric. Comparisons with Ken Kesey and Tom Robbins are not only inevitable, they are welcome."
-The Globe and Mail (Canada)

For more REVIEWS click on the PRAISE page

The "Border Songs" cover was created by Chip Kidd. It features a Walton Ford painting called "Falling Bough."

From the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf:

By the acclaimed author of The Highest Tide, a story of contrary destinies further complicated by the border that separates them.

Six foot eight and severely dyslexic, Brandon Vanderkool has always had an unusual perspective—which comes in handy once his father pushes him off their dairy farm and into the Border Patrol. He used to jump over the ditch into British Columbia but now is responsible for policing a thirty-mile stretch of this largely invisible boundary. Uncomfortable in this uniformed role, he indulges his passion for bird-watching and often finds not only an astonishing variety of species but also a great many smugglers hauling pot into Washington State, as well as potentially more dangerous illegals. What a decade before was a sleepy rural hinterland is now the front line of an escalating war on both drugs and terrorism.

Life on either side of the border is undergoing a similar transformation. Mountaintop mansions in Canada peer down into berry farms that might offer convenient routes into the budding American market, politicians clamor for increased security, surveillance cameras sprout up everywhere and previously law-abiding citizens are tempted to turn a blind eye. Closer to home, Brandon’s father battles disease in his herd, and his mother something far more frightening. Madeline Rousseau, who grew up right across the ditch, has seen her gardening skills turn lucrative, while her father keeps busy by replicating great past inventions, medicating himself and railing against imperialism. And overseeing all is the mysterious masseuse who knows everybody’s secrets.

Rich in characters contending with a swiftly changing world and their own elusive hopes and dreams, Border Songs is at once comic and tender and momentous—a riveting portrait of a distinctive community, an extraordinary love story and fiction of the highest order.


Click on the Knopf link for a Q&A with Jim Lynch about "Border Songs"

To read more early praise for "Border Songs" click on the novels page.

For more information on Jim, click on the bio page.